Each hourlong episode tackles another great scientific question, like--"What Are Animals Thinking?" or "How Smart Can We Get?" My particular favorites are "What Will the Future Be Like?" and "What Makes us Human?"

This week's New York Times column

You always remember the days that changed your life forever. Your first kiss. The birth of a child. The day you got a TiVo.

I do, anyway. TiVo made me a cultist. “I don’t know or care when a TV show will be broadcast or on what channel,” I’d explain to anyone who would listen. “I just tell the TiVo what show or actor or director I like, and it records shows automatically. I bypass ads with the 30-second skip button. I can watch an hourlong show in 40 minutes!”

Wow, how times have changed. Cable companies can now rent you less polished but far less expensive DVRs. The monthly fee is usually about the same as the TiVo, $15. (You can also pay TiVo a one-time $500.)

People started watching TV over the Internet, too. Most people watch TV the old-fashioned way — from cable or satellite — but many don’t want to be anchored to the living room. They want to watch from any room in the house, or even out of the house.

The TiVo is still out there ($150 to $400, depending on recording capacity). The latest models, the Premiere family, are smaller and better-looking than old TiVos; the high-end models can record from as many as four channels simultaneously...more

(Requires a free, one-time registration.)

This week's email column

There’s so much to love about e-books. They weigh nothing, they remember your place, you can make the type larger.

But as I’ve written over and over, they are also a rip-off in one big way: Although e-books cost nearly the same as printed books, you can’t sell or donate them when you’re finished reading. So my eyebrows nearly shot off my face when I read an article in The Times indicating that both Amazon and Apple have filed for patents to make reselling e-books possible. These patents would cover not just e-books but music, movies and computer programs.

Recent video

Natural gas can be cheap and plentiful, and could supply us with energy for decades to come. But to get AT all that natural gas, you have to delve far beneath the surface of the earth. That's where FRACKING comes in. David Pogue of The New York Times reports our Cover Story...